I live in southeast Pa. and we have bakeries in our area that make what they call a tomatoe pie. It is basically a large square pizza with a sweet tomatoe sauce on top and no cheese. It is usually purchased already cooked but at room temperature. The tomatoe sauce they use seems to be very thick almost like tomatoe paste. Does anyone have any info on this style pizza? Especially what that sauce consists of.

I used a sauce of this type when I served a Focaccia with a thick version of my own pizza sauce. The only difference is that I strain the 6in1's completely before continuing. If you wanted it even thicker, you could add a bit of tomato paste but, as you can see, the sauce on my Focaccia didn't "run". Art

I know these. They are incredibly popular here in Montreal. A mass-produced version (wrapped in cellophane, not frozen or refrigerated) can be found in every store that sells groceries in this city, and they are also made fresh at many bakeries as well. I'm pretty sure the sauce is just ground/crushed Italian tomatoes (with a little salt, sugar, spice, and oil) that thicken out during the time it takes to bake them. I often make pizzas with a similar dough at home, although I always end up using a more agressive pizza sauce and a full complement of toppings (and eat it hot). I've been thinking of the tomato-only, room-temperature version myself lately and might try making one on the weekend.

I finally got around to making one of these today. It turned out to be quite a bit trickier than it would seem. I used one of my standard Sicilian-style doughs (100% flour, 65% water, .35% IDY, 2% salt, 5% oil) and baked it at 450 for 20 minutes, as I would with my fully-topped Sicilians. Both the rim and the bottom turned out rather hard and crunchy, and moreover some parts of the bottom got aggressively stuck to the bottom of the (well-oiled) pan, resulting in difficult removal and severe damage to some sections of the pie.

I have baked umpteen fully-topped Sicilians with this recipe and baking protocol. They have always turned out soft and supple, and never glued themselves to the pan the way this tomato pie did. I figure that water loss is the effective mechanism here. Without a layer of cheese and other toppings to serve as insulation, this pizza generated an awful lot of steam while baking (I got an unpleasant blast of it square in the face when I tried opening the oven door halfway through the bake). I figure that, on the one hand, unchecked moisture loss caused the bottom to dry out and stick to the pan, while the considerable steam that emanated from both the dough and the bare sauce caused the rim to thicken and harden.

Fortunately, the pie was not a total loss- the crumb was excellent for the most part, and the format in general is a tomato lover's dream, showcasing that fruit in a way that no other vehicle really can. I plan on making many more, ironing out the bugs along the way as I go.

It should go without saying that any opinions or suggestions are more than welcome.

Tried my hand at another one today. After having mulled it over for several months, I surmised that the problem with the pie drying out and turning hard could be solved by baking it at a much higher temperature (i.e. on a stone preheated to 550), thereby depriving it of several minutes of baking time in which to dry out (to wit, the bake time was reduced from 20 to 9.5 minutes). Fearful that the bottom might blacken by the time the pie was finished baking at this temp, I increased the hydration to 70%. Finally, as a further hedge against hardening, I increased the oil to 6%. These countermeasures worked in spades, yielding a soft and supple crust with a thin layer of crisp on the bottom.

In my last post in this thread, I noted that this style of pizza is an excellent showcase for tomatoes; the one I made today made me realize that it is a superb showcase for crust as well, what with the thickness the style calls for and the fact that the dough is nude save for the tomatoes. I think that many of the dough artisans around here would get a very pleasant suprise if they tried out this style.

Erasamo,I am very interested in this also. I just picked up 4 quarter sections at Conshohocken bakeries two days ago. The flavors are really great. You can pick up different subtleties with every bite, even the EVOO. Trying to recreate it is on my list of things to do. I also want to recreate Coropolese tomato pie.

Coropolese sells the sauce that they use on their tomato pie in the Froz Door cases. I picked some up and plan to backward engineer from there. You may want to try that also.

Here is a recipe for Pa. Sauce I posted awhile back......I think it will be very close to the sauce you mentioned. You can reduce or increase the amount of water depending on just how thick or thin you want it to be. I'm from Pa, so I make a batch when I get homesick for Tootsie's pizza..

Measure dry ingredients into a small container, mix together well, and set aside. In a medium sized saucepan, combine tomato paste with water over medium heat until it has a uniform consistency. When it begins to bubble, add pre-measured spices and reduce heat to medium-low.

These tomato pies sound very good. I have never tried any, but in the next few weeks it is something I want to try. I think I will try a focaccia baked in a 8"x16" pan. The NY style Lehmann recipe works well to make bread sticks, cinnamon twists, garlic knots and more, so I will try this dough.Thanks for the idea! Norma

Here are some pics of a leftover slice of last night's tomato pie. It was made out of a dough that was salvaged and repurposed on the fly from another project that went horribly wrong, so no precise technical specs are available. The dough was pressed into a pan immediately after being removed from the mixer and hand-kneaded, left to rise at room temp for about 5 hours, topped, and baked in the pan on a stone at 550 for 11 minutes.

The sauce was very simple, comprised only of tomatoes, salt, sugar, dried oregano, and garlic powder; it left a wonderful aroma in the kitchen as it cooked on the pie, during which process it became very sweet and flavourful.

As to the crust: the 11 minute baking time was about 2 minutes too long, resulting in a bottom and cornicone that were somewhat crunchier than they should have been (but by no means catastrophically so). Had I used bread flour or a mix of AP and bread flour instead of 100% AP, the depth of browning at 9 minutes would have been my cue that the pie was done- but I didn't, and so here we are.

While the crumb on this pizza looks kind of dense, the dough had been left to rise as it far it possibly could, and the result- distinctly unlike the mass-produced, grocery-store version I posted about above- was not a gutbuster in any sense of the word. If anything, it was too light- I ate several slices and regained my appetite within about 2 hours.

Typical mass-produced, grocery-store tomato pizza as found in Montreal and elsewhere in Canada, wrapped in cellophane. This company alone sells 30,000 units in Montreal per week, and there are many other brands offering the same type of product.

Thanks Pete. The guys behind that company were marketing geniuses. They introduced their tomato pizza in the 1970s when frozen pizza was still in its infancy (at least around here) and they took off like a rocketship. Everybody in this city who eats pizzas eats them or has eaten them.

Here's my latest take on a home version, influenced by my recent experiments with Pizza Romana. Baked at 525 for 9 minutes. Both the interior and exterior of this pizza were as soft as a sponge, and were so right out of the oven. Real comfort food. The white thing on the middle slice that looks like mozz is actually dough that got sliced off by the pizza wheel during slicing.